FOI 784/25

REQUEST

I am writing to request the following information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000:

• The current criteria used by Operation SNAP to determine whether submissions receive enforcement action, advisory notice, or no action.

• The date and nature of any policy change which resulted in the discontinuation of advisory notices.

• The number of Operation SNAP submissions received each month over the last 12 months.

• The number of submissions that resulted in:

1. Prosecutions
2. Advisory notices (warning letters)
3. No further action

• Any internal documents or communications explaining or justifying the change in policy regarding advisory notices.

RESPONSE

Question 4

Your request for information has now been considered and I am not obliged to supply the information you have requested.       

Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires South Wales Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you the applicant with a notice which: 

(a) states that fact,

(b) specifies the exemption in question and

(c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.

In relation to your particular request, the following exemption applies:

Section 12 – Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit.

We have consulted with our Operational Support Services Department who confirm that there were 11,000 Operation SNAP submissions in the last 12 months.

In relation to question 4, we’re unable to filter the data automatically to bring back the outcome types and therefore, we would be required to individually interrogate each submission in order to establish the outcome.

We estimate that it would take approximately 1 minute to interrogate each submission and we therefore estimate that it would take in excess of 183 hours to answer question 4 of your request.

It is estimated that the cost of providing you with the information is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the "appropriate level" as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.

In the case of the police service, the appropriate limit is £450 which has been calculated to equate to a total of 18 hours of work.

If any part of the request exceeds the fees limit then Section 12 applies to the whole request.

In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a refusal notice.

Excess cost removes the forces obligation under the Freedom of Information Act, however under Section 16 – Duty to provide advice and assistance, an authority is required to offer an applicant the opportunity to redefine their request within the cost limit. If you were to remove question 4, we may be able to assist with the rest of your request.